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Jon Wasson is a cool dude. I just had a good lunch with him over Dallas’ finest Tex-Mex. We had good conversation about life, ministry, etc.

We talked about a lot of random topics, but what I’m really thinking on is how life is frustrating. And it seems there’s no way around it.

We constantly live in this tension of how we think life should be, or how we want life to be, and how life really is. This is true in church life, about faith in general, with family & relationships, and even in the bigger realities of the universe.

We are called to be frustrated.

We are also called to let frustration not have the final answer.

We are to be people who endeavor to see the best in people rise up. Which means we will often have to deal with the worst in people.

Life must deal with death. Victory happens while living on the edge of defeat. Love trumps because it trumps hate.

We are people of life. We are people of victorious grace. We are people of love.

What does this practically mean? It means that we can’t give up. We can’t accept frustration as the final answer. Frustration makes us better, it makes us stronger.

But we….we are too easy on ourselves.

We quit. We give up. We move or we change jobs. We get divorced or we jump.

Maybe frustration is the status quo. It’s reality.

And as people of God, people of the Way of the Cross, we must rise up and see beyond the status quo. Because frustration is not the final answer. Frustration is the tension that we live in, even the tension that provokes us. We can’t do away with it. If we leave frustration we leave our souls in the midst of selfish and self-righteous pursuits of egotistic utopias that will never exist.

The grass is not greener on the other side. But God is good on both sides, and frustrations are a part of embracing that God is good and we are works in process.

Now go and devote yourself to embracing & challenging frustration.